“I’m looking forward to fighting an election to change the way that politicians relate to the bureaucracy,” Jones said.
“I know we have this separation of governance and the bureaucracy, but I’m really attracted to the idea where the Aussies have softened that line, and key ministers bring in their s***-kickers to get things done. That’s always been my preference,” he told Stuff at the time.
NZ First has historically favoured a more Australian model. In Australia, the Governor-General, acting on the advice of the Prime Minister, appoints chief executives. The Public Service Commissioner is involved in identifying and recommending candidates.
The Herald understands NZ First pushed the last Labour Government, unsuccessfully, to have more political control over appointments when then Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins was himself reforming the State Sector Act during the Labour’s first term. The act was replaced by the Public Service Act.
The New Zealand process includes a greater separation of the political and public service levels than Australia. The Public Service Commissioner recruits and appoints chief executives, who ultimately report to the commissioner. The Public Service Act gives ministers three points at which they can have input into appointing chief executives.
The Public Service Minister and the relevant policy ministers are invited to identify matters they want selection panels to focus on when recruiting a chief executive; policy ministers are then consulted on external members of the interview panel.
The Prime Minister and then the Minister of the Public Service are consulted before finalising terms and conditions of employment.
While it is the commissioner who decides on the person to be recommended for appointment, before the appointment is made, the nominee’s name is referred to the Minister for the Public Service, who refers the recommendation to the Governor-General in council, who decides whether to accept or decline the recommendation, and the minister conveys the decision to the commissioner who makes the appointment.
In practice, this gives ministers a great deal of input.
One grey area is around the reappointment of chief executives and the level of input ministers have into whether they are happy with the chief executive’s performance before the commission begins the process to reappoint a chief executive or open the role up to a pool of new applicants. This may be one area the Government looks to clarify.
Asked whether he was considering giving himself or ministers the power to appoint chief executives directly, Luxon said: “We’ll talk about those changes in due course. I’m not going to get into that today.”
“We’re not going to get into that conversation today. It hasn’t been a focus of my conversations,” he said.
“I understand the Australian model, I know that well, but what I’m saying is with respect to the public service, what we expect is efficiency, delivery and fixation on focus,” Luxon said.
Luxon was twice asked to rule out giving himself or Cabinet the power to make appointments, but would not rule out those changes.
“I’m not going to discuss it ... there’s a lot of changes we want to make,” Luxon said.
Asked again, he harked back to former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Howard is known for sacking six departmental chief executives soon after taking office in 1996 during what was called the “night of the long knives”. He said this was not his goal.
“If you like Australian politics, you know what John Howard did back in the day, that’s not on my agenda, that’s not what I’ve been talking about, what I’m talking about is that we can better delivery out of our public service. We need to make sure that it is efficient, it is effective, it is delivering for New Zealanders and it is focused on the customer, which is New Zealanders,” Luxon said.
The minister in charge of the appointments, Public Service Minister Judith Collins, could not be reached for comment as she was travelling.
Labour’s Chris Hipkins, who was himself a former Minister for the Public Service, said he would be “strongly opposed” to allowing ministers to directly appoint chief executives.
“New Zealand has an apolitical public service. Our public service chief executives should serve whomever the government of the day is,” Hipkins said.
“If you want to see the sort of chaos that can emerge from a politically appointed public service leadership, look only to the United States of America and what’s happening over there at the moment. I don’t think we want to see that kind of chaos imported into New Zealand,” he said.
Hipkins said a move to greater political power over appointments would be Trumpian.
“I think an apolitical public service has a very proud tradition of serving governments of the day, of being the institutional memory of government,” he said.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
